Crossing the finish line of my first marathon was a life-changing experience... leading me on a journey to become the healthiest version of myself I can be. When I say "healthy" I am not just referring to physical fitness... I am referring to whole body health, emotional health, mental health... the whole shebang! Learn more about me

Tag Archives: 5K

This morning Alex and I ran the DJs for PJs 5K. Well… I ran it, she went along for the ride.

I picked up my packet the day before at a local Kohl’s store. Part of the event was a pajama drive for kids, so I had purchased a pair of baby pajamas at Target earlier in the week. I felt a little silly carrying a pair of pajamas into Kohl’s to donate. I guess I could have just bought a pair there!

Race participants could pick between a gray or a blue shirt. My shirt is a size S and it is huge. It will either become a sleep shirt or disappear completely.

The packet also came with about a billion pieces of paper for various businesses, some of which I actually found interesting. There were some for free drinks and free desserts. (Okay, odds are I will never redeem those, because I don’t need a yard size drink and the desserts are at places I probably wouldn’t take my daughter for dinner and I don’t know what a date night is anymore.)

Also, there were a couple of things for free workouts: a boot camp workout and a couple classes at a yoga studio. The yoga studio is nowhere near my house… but they have TRX classes. If I can fit in a couple free TRX classes, I’d love to try it! Those may be worth redeeming.

We also got some other random stuff, including a water bottle that came with a warning that you should never put it in the dishwasher as it may melt. WHAT?! And a pen on a leash… in case your pen wanders away. And one of those RedStar sunglasses cards. Anyone ever redeemed one of those?

It was about 75 degrees at race time, but it definitely felt warmer than that! My body needs to do the first heat adaptation! (The second will come when we are over 100 all the time! Vegas Baby!)

Runners/walkers were encouraged to wear their PJs for the race. The irony, I wore an old race tech-shirt to bed with a pair of gym shorts. I got up in the morning, changed out of those into a different tech shirt and running shorts! The people who actually wore PJs looked too hot!

The course was uphill for the first half. I’ve run this path soooooo many times. I don’t even know how many times, yet today it felt harder than it ever has in the past. Maybe because I was pushing about 50 pounds uphill! (I think the stroller weighs about 30 lbs and my little peanut is around 21 lbs.)

I like the pace chart from my Garmin, how you can see where it dips on some inclines. Oh, and where my passenger demanded WATER! and when she was ALL DONE! I’m not so competitive that I’m going to ignore that, it was warm!

I had a lot of cheers on the course, lots of people yelling out “Go Mommy Runner!” and “Run Mom!” At the turnaround the volunteers there were yelling, “First stroller runner! Woo hoo!” It was kind of funny, I have never gotten that much attention for pushing a stroller in a race. At the finish line there was a gal just a little ahead of me and some guy started yelling, “Go mom runner, push it in. Pass that girl!” So I did…

We got a medal when we crossed the finish line. Then the organizers said, “Give them another one, for the baby.” So Alex has her own medal, her very first one. She likes pointing out the “baby” on it. (She points out babies everywhere.)

Jamba Juice was one of the sponsors and they had little smoothies at the finish for everyone. I went to pick one up and they asked if I wanted one for my cute baby. I had assumed I would just share some with her, but they promised there was enough for her to have her own. She loved it.

What she didn’t love was all the people who wanted to talk to her. And when the race photographers/videographers gathered right in front of me and asked if they could take our picture and get video of us, she started to cry. She has a little bit of trouble with straw cups sometimes, she tries to tip them up like she was drinking from a sippy cup. And well… that gets messy. So when you are already kind of upset and then end up with cold smoothie all down the front of your chest, you might be sad and start crying harder, saying, “Go go go. Home.” So we left before the awards ceremony could start, thus I have no idea if I placed in my AG or if we won any of the raffle prizes. But we did ruin a shirt!

It was a fun little event, I think the crowd was a little smaller because there was the big Mustang 50th Anniversary Half/5K going on, but that’s a one time thing and if they do this one again next year I’d participate. It’s a good cause and they did a nice job with the organization. And there’s something about having down a race in the morning that makes the day feel so much more interesting than if we’d just done the menu planning, grocery shopping, stuff around home like usual.

After I ended 2012 with a 10K, I started 2013 with a 5K. This time I ran the Commitment Day 5K, a race produced by Lifetime events that was run all around the country to encourage people to kick off their year with a commitment to a healthier lifestyle.

Each participant was given a bib number with a blank for them to write their name and their commitment for the year on it. When I initially signed up for this event I thought I would commit to nourishing my body and soul, but as the event got closer, I knew I had to change my commitment.

My Commitment: Laugh More, Stress Less

I haven’t been very happy lately. I have a great husband, a beautiful & healthy baby girl, a loving dog, a good job, a nice home, so many things… yet I have been letting those things also be a source of great stress in my life. I fail to see the humor in things, I’ve lost some of the playfulness that I used to have in my relationships. It’s like the posters for The Dark Knight with the Joker on them that said “Why So Serious?”

Why so Serious? Joker in The Dark Knight

The moment that I thought of that as my “commitment” for the year, I knew it was right. The challenge will be in figuring out how to maintain that. But if it was easy then it wouldn’t be that much of a commitment, right? I could have always copped out and wrote “Brush My Teeth” on the bib. But since I already do that, it would be pointless.

I woke up in the morning, at a Clif baf while I got dressed. Then Alex started to wake up at 6:15 so I went into her room to feed her and get her dressed for the day. I took her downstairs and left her hanging out with my mom to get to the race. It was cold out, but beautiful out too. And unlike my race the day before, I was jazzed and ready to go this time. The night before had re-invigorated me and helped me to remember that I really do love to participate in races. I love being a part of a bigger community than just a runner of one.

I got to Lifetime Fitness, where the race started, and followed the throngs of people dressed in Lululemon to the front doors. It seemed like that was some kind of unspoken dress code at this event! I felt kind of frumpy in my Target C9 jacket and Nike capris that were a tiny bit baggy. But I felt super cool in my Brooks PureDrift shoes! I hung out inside the club for about 10 minutes and then ventured out toward the start line with about 3 minutes to spare before the race kicked off.

Hanging out inside in my new Athleta beanie the hubby bought me for Christmas.

The race started off with a bunch of announcements about the course, but nobody could hear them. The RD needed a louder microphone. No one paid any attention, but it didn’t matter. The course was marked well. There were a couple of places where the course narrowed a little too much for the size of the crowd participating, which meant you had to slow down and trip over one another a little. But for the most part, it was a nice course, pretty much flat the whole way.

There wasn’t any chip timing with the event. And while I didn’t have any goals for this race, I was kind of curious to see what my time would be so I wore my Garmin. I started it at the beginning and it immediately gave me a warning that the battery was low. I changed the screen to only show me the time of day, I didn’t want to look at it and think about my pace during the race. Making that switch helped me to ignore it the whole time. I glanced at it as I went across the finish line, just in time to see the screen flicker off as the battery died. I synced it when I got home and saw that it read 28:23. Good enough for me!

After the race participants could pick up their swag. We got a little drawstring bag (I have about a billion of these things, they seemed to be the hot race item for a while. I wonder what will be next “thing”.) that contained our t-shirt and a training journal.

The training journal is a hardback book that has a yearly calendar and several training notes and tips throughout. It has a calendar for the entire year, broken down by each week. It allows you to set a goal at the beginning of each week and then mark how you feel you progressed on that goal at the end of each week. It also comes pre-scheduled with several Lifetime events… so there is an element of advertising to it! But it’s pretty nice.

I walked through the food line, I was one of the first people to go through this. (Most people were still on the course, there were a lot of walkers and families participating.) I grabbed a bottle of water, but they also had Gatorade and G2 available. The food included mini muffins, croissants and something called Aussie Bites, which I grabbed one. It’s something made out of oats, flax, dried apricots, honey, etc. Kind of a healthy mini muffin, it was a little dry but pretty tasty and kind of addicting. I wanted to go back for another but the food line had really filled up by then. They also had a bunch of fruits and yogurts available.

After I ate a little bit, I went back to my car so I could get back home. Alex usually eats at 9:30, so I wanted to get home and showered before she was too hungry. When I got home she was sitting happily in my husband’s arms. She had taken a nap in my mom’s arms after I left and was a well-rested and content baby.

This was seriously the best end and start to a year that I’ve had in a long time. I posted it on Facebook, but it was an opportunity to feel like ME again. And by getting to have that bit of myself back and to regain that joy, it makes me better when I am in MOM mode too.

Let’s just preface this by saying: I don’t like being dirty. Yard work sucks because you have to dig in the dirt. Getting sweaty and smelly is probably my least favorite part of running. The idea of doing a mud run kind of freaks me out because I’d be so filthy. So the mere fact that when I heard about The Color Run and asked my mom if she wanted to do it is kind of weird. But for some reason, I was intrigued and wanted to do it.

At first I thought they actually flung paint on participants, wet paint. And I was okay with that idea. But then I learned that it’s a colored powder made out of some kind of corn derivative and was okay with that too. Even if it meant I would potentially track it home with me. I just wanted to do something fun.

So my mom and I made our way to the Fremont Street Experience, where the race was starting/finishing. We had made plans to meet a bunch of my Team Challenge members there as well, since all of us were signed up.

All participants were given a packet of color powder to use at the finish line party. I pinned my packet to me so I wouldn’t have to carry it… which didn’t work so well because it fell off at some point early on. But I thought it had a strange warning on the package:

For Sale or Use outside the State of Utah only.

I’m pretty sure The Color Run management is based out of Utah. And yet, they don’t have a color run in Utah schedule and the powder is for use outside of Utah only? What do they know that we don’t? Maybe they’re poisoning the rest of the country? [Edit: They’ve started a Color Run event in Utah since this post went up originally.]

For some bizarre reason they let the participants go in a wave start. I understand the theory and concept of wave starts… but in this race, it’s not timed and I seriously doubt anyone was trying to do it for a time goal. If they were, they were in the wrong event. This is the kind of thing where you go out and play, just have fun. And the wave start didn’t seem to have any organization or rhyme or reason. The race technically started at 9:00 AM, but I’m willing to bet it was at least 45 minutes or longer than that before we got to actually start. I was starting to get dizzy while standing there waiting, wishing that I’d brought some water with me. Plus I had to go to the bathroom by this point too and there were NO PORTA POTTIES anywhere! Seriously? How can you plan a race without any toilets, especially one with about 6000 people or so? That just seems dumb.

Standing around waiting to start, people were getting antsy and silly. A woman near us tore open her finish line color packet and started pouring it into her hands before grabbing her friends’ breasts and butts to leave handprints:

But we finally got to get started after what felt like FOREVER standing there with the sun baking on my face. They had a color station at each kilometer of the race. Each one was a specific color with flags corresponding to that color leading up to, so you knew that you were approaching yellow, or green, or purple, or pink.

I kept my camera in a plastic bag inside a Spi-Belt throughout the race. I didn’t want to get color powder all over the outside or inside of it, so no photos during the race.

Upon crossing the finish line, we asked some little kids that were playing with open color packets to add some color to us, so we got some orange and red and blue added to the mix.

They had water, granola bars and fruit for post-race refreshment. I took an orange and as tasty as it sounded to me, there was no way I was going to eat it there. And I saw a couple people trying to eat oranges and oranges on the ground that perfectly illustrate why I didn’t want to eat it in my current color-y, powder-y, state:
YUCK!

The finish-line festival had periodic countdowns where people were supposed to all open and throw their color packets into the air at the same time:

It was pretty cool looking, but most people weren’t waiting for the official countdowns to open their packets. Thus there were a lot of scenes like these around:

I wore some old white arm sleeves for the race, since it was 50 degrees at the start, I’m a desert-dweller and that’s cold to me. They ended up looking really cool!

The color powder really permeates. It went through my shoes to my socks:
And through my socks to my feet:

And anywhere that we sweat, the color is kind of staining. So my feet still have a purple tint to them. And my mom’s underarms and bra-line do too:

I am sooooo glad I did this race. There were a lot of people with kids on the course. I’m a little too uptight about mess to want to push a toddler in a stroller through this, since then you’d have yourself, a kid AND a stroller to clean up. But when kids are mobile enough to do a 5K on their own, it would be fun. There were several 5 or 6-year-old kids that were squealing in delight about each color station. This was a fun race and if there is one near you… DO IT!

Nobody asked me to post this, I just thought it sounded like a nice idea. I have not yet decided if I’m going to sign up for the local Thanksgiving Day race, but no matter what I’m planning on running at least a 5K that morning, so I’m in for this. It’s cheaper than an official race entry!

I ran the local “Catch the Gobbler” 5K race this morning. It rained most of the day yesterday and overnight. It was a little drizzly this morning, but cleared up for the race. Mainly the idea was to avoid the big puddles!

Me, after the 'Catch the Gobbler' 5K with my entrant's sweatshirt.

Don’t know exactly what my time was, don’t really care either. I was just glad to get out and run with friends.

And now I must finish up some final preparations for Thanksgiving dinner with my running friends and their families. I made sweet potatoes, cranberries, bread and pies (pumpkin and pecan). I’m a little concerned about how things turned out, I haven’t been flexing my cooking muscles lately!